Headphoneus Supremus

Yeah blue filter kills all treble to my ear. I modded my blue filters so now it’s more of a low key green. Popped out the plastic insert and a head fi buddy drilled some small holes to introduce some treble leakage. Fun every so often but I generally hang out in gunmetal. I just mainly fiddle with the ulf filters and alternate between red and black which correspond to flat and mild low bass accentuation

What I love about these is the combination of good sound, efficiency as they draw less power than many audiophile iem units, and comfort. I mean these are wonderfully comfortable. The lz a4 sounds good and is less money but is not very comfortable. That is another unit that competes for buyers of the Flc8s. The lz a5 looks more like the Flc8s and may be an improvement

Looks like Forrest is putting out a ton of new units so I look forward to hearing more about those. I know I would be up for auditions of these

Headphoneus Supremus

Yeah blue filter kills all treble to my ear. I modded my blue filters so now it’s more of a low key green. Popped out the plastic insert and a head fi buddy drilled some small holes to introduce some treble leakage. Fun every so often but I generally hang out in gunmetal. I just mainly fiddle with the ulf filters and alternate between red and black which correspond to flat and mild low bass accentuation

What I love about these is the combination of good sound, efficiency as they draw less power than many audiophile iem units, and comfort. I mean these are wonderfully comfortable. The lz a4 sounds good and is less money but is not very comfortable. That is another unit that competes for buyers of the Flc8s. The lz a5 looks more like the Flc8s and may be an improvement

Looks like Forrest is putting out a ton of new units so I look forward to hearing more about those. I know I would be up for auditions of these

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Your blue filter mod sounds interesting. Do you have any more details (and pictures?!) of what you did?

New Head-Fier

1. The cable is using the UE 0.75mm standard, though in some cases the pin-size is actually a tiny bit smaller at 0.74mm. It still works, but there is some risk of stretching the connectors using regular UE-type cables.
2. When and where did the seller purchase it from? The FLC8s has an one year warranty.
3. My preference goes to the Sony Hybrids and JVC Spiral Dots.

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Thanks a lot! For my other iem's I quite prefer the Spiral Dots too, but I lost mine, and it's really hard to purchase some.

Since the cable I have have been reterminated to 2.5mm, I could temporarily use my cheap 0.75mm KZ cable right to play it on my phone right? A least temporarily, until I have a DAP with 2.5mm output. Or would it be better to use a 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter?

Also, a local cable maker informed me that I could use a standard .78mm 2-pin cable, but it will stretch the 2-pin sockets on the IEM, and as such, I cannot use the stock cables anymore, byt I could use standard .78mm cables. Is this true? And is there a high risk of doing permanent damage?

500+ Head-Fier

500+ Head-Fier

Thanks a lot! For my other iem's I quite prefer the Spiral Dots too, but I lost mine, and it's really hard to purchase some.

Since the cable I have have been reterminated to 2.5mm, I could temporarily use my cheap 0.75mm KZ cable right to play it on my phone right? A least temporarily, until I have a DAP with 2.5mm output. Or would it be better to use a 2.5mm to 3.5mm adapter?

Also, a local cable maker informed me that I could use a standard .78mm 2-pin cable, but it will stretch the 2-pin sockets on the IEM, and as such, I cannot use the stock cables anymore, byt I could use standard .78mm cables. Is this true? And is there a high risk of doing permanent damage?

Click to expand...

I use a custom 0.75mm cable for the FLC8 and it has streched the connector quite significantly. So much infact that the standard cable has trouble staying in place. I suppose the .78mm variant makes this even worse, perhaps to the point of destroying the IEM in its entirety. Not recommended.

Headphoneus Supremus

Your blue filter mod sounds interesting. Do you have any more details (and pictures?!) of what you did?

Click to expand...

Per Forrest:

The blue nozzle has a high density dampener, it's hard to modify

if you want to modify the nozzles, please modify the gold as the drawing below.

Drill another hole to the nozzle, the hole will reduce some treble, if you don't like the new sound, you can block it by a tape.

......

So a buddy who has access to sophisticated drill equipment made these holes per this diagram. I did modify the blue filter even though Forrest suggested I modify the gold filter. Mainly because I like the gold filter and did not want to kill it whereas I repudiate the blue filter. You also need to remove the plastic inserts in the blue filter; which turns the blue filter into a green filter before the holes are drilled.

New Head-Fier

Joined:
Feb 14, 2008

Posts:
45

Likes: 18

I'm still loving my FLC8s. If anyone cares, they can be purchased from MusicTeck for $299, at the moment. I can't imagine a better deal on earphones. $299 for these things? I should buy a second pair for that price out of principal.

Funny/Not-so-funny story: I 'accidentally' purchased the balanced version of the FLC8s and so had to buy an adapter to convert to the 2.5mm jack to a standard 3.5mm (no big deal). But, I need a DAC and now I'm thinking I should take advantage of the situation and buy a DAC with a balanced input. The thing is I don't need amplification. The FLCs are such a low impedance that amplification is unnecessary (I currently have them plugged into an AudioEngine D3 and I have to turn the volume way down to not blast my ears).

Does anyone have any suggestions for a balanced DAC? Is there even such a thing without, or at least with manageable, amplification? Or, even one that isn't multiple times the price of these IEM to begin with?

Headphoneus Supremus

Two balanced DAP units I am looking at right now at the Shanling M3S and the Cayin N5II. PInky Powers has written quite a bit on both units recently and he has a good ear and a fun writing style. Plus he is in the midwest which is a plus.

500+ Head-Fier

From my experience, balanced does absolutely nothing audibily. The changes are mostly because of the extra power the unit provides. Headroom is nice and all, but with the super-low impedance of the FLC8s, this is something which barely matters. However, the one thing I'd keep an eye on is output impedance. Both ports can have differences in OI, which in the case of the FLC8s can matter greatly. There is no real answer to what you should consider purchasing, electrical implementation is key. I had cases where the Balanced Output caused some wierd jitter and distortion. (mostly because QC was bad or using some unwise resistor/cap values to safe a couple of bucks). I use the Aune M1S, which has been my go-to player. Simple U.I., decent power for most headphones and no issues in terms of reliablity.